


Love is Only Sometimes

by JellyDishes



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Vanya airs out a few back issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-17
Updated: 2020-03-17
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:00:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23185153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JellyDishes/pseuds/JellyDishes
Summary: Vanya finally gives voice to a few things that have been plaguing her mind, to the most sympathetic audience she knows.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 25





	Love is Only Sometimes

Vanya looked down at her clasped hands. They were remarkably steady, didn't shake an inch. She stared down at her clasped hands until they started to blur and swim together. Her eyes itched. “What was that?” She asked without looking up. 

The pattern on the other woman’s pants shifted as she crossed her legs. “I said that forgiveness isn't something anyone can ask or demand of you. You need to decide when you're ready.”

She stared at her hands. Her thoughts didn't go immediately to dad, but to Pogo and mom. She thought about Pogo and mom. Between them there had been comfort, but they’d never closed the circle of their arms enough to keep out dad. “What if I'm never ready?” She asked in an undertone barely loud enough to be heard. “What if I keep it in my chest, forever?”

The woman recrossed her legs. “Then you aren't. Many people never are, it is all very individual. But it is also very important for you to break this cycle you have of returning to the places that harm you.”

“I've never gone back.” The words weren't sharp, or spoken in a rising voice, but flatly. Dull as the old knife Diego had lost once, that she’d taken from his room while he was away and hidden under her mattress. “Haven't looked back since the day I left.”

“I know that,” the other woman said, and of course she did. Wasn't like it didn't cross Vanya’s mind enough. “That wasn't what I meant. A place you return to can just as easily be a mental place. One of anger or fear or grief, or,” she added after a pause in which whole conversations may have crossed her face, “all or none of them.” 

“I'm not angry,” Vanya told her hands. She stared at the way they didn't shake. Not an inch. And she marveled, again, that lying came easily to her now. After an entire childhood, an entire book's worth of truths. 

“What are you then, Vanya?” The woman she was speaking to tilted her head so that long brown hair tumbled over her shoulder in a movement that was eerily familiar. “What are you afraid of? What else can you grieve without putting down that weight?”

Vanya frowned. “There's no weight,” she insisted, her voice rising in volume. “There's nothing. I feel, empty. Tired. Numb. Why isn't there anything? Why isn't there ever anything?”

The woman shook her head in such a way that Vanya ached to look closer, but the very idea of looking away from her own hands ached deep within her chest. Standing, she began to pace the confines of the anechoic chamber  with jerking, impatient haste. There was no one else there with her, but of course there was nothing and no one. Why would there be?


End file.
